A Medical Device Daily

Stephen Guillard, executive VP and COO of Manor Care (Toledo, Ohio), reported that the West Virginia Health Care Authority has lifted the stay on the approval of a transaction with private equity firm the Carlyle Group to take the company private in an a transaction worth about $6.3 billion in cash.

The transaction was originally unveiled in July (Medical Device Daily, July 6, 2007).

Regulatory requirements have been met in the 32 states in which Manor Care operates. A number of states held legislative hearings on the transaction, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin. Congressional committees, including the Senate Committee on Aging and the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, also held hearings on various issues related to the transaction.

Manor Care said it will continue to work with state and federal agencies that provide oversight to ensure that quality care is provided to its patients and residents.

Manor Care stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at market close on Friday.

In other legalities:

• Home Diagnostics (Fort Lauderdale, Florida), a manufacturer of diabetes testing supplies, reported reaching a settlement with Roche (Basel, Switzerland) regarding a patent infringement suit filed in 2004.

Roche had alleged that Home Diagnostics’ TrueTrack Smart System and TrackEASE Smart System blood glucose monitors infringed on U.S. Patent Nos. 5,366,609 and Re. 36,268, relating to biosensing blood glucose monitors.

Terms of the settlement include a paid-up worldwide license under the patents at issue, with amount paid by Home Diagnostics recorded as an expense in its 4Q07 financial results. In addition, the settlement terms include a covenant by Roche not to sue Home Diagnostics on the licensed patents.

• Dilon Technologies (Newport News, Virginia) and Naviscan PET Systems (San Diego) said they have settled their lawsuit over Dilon’s medical imaging equipment.

Naviscan filed suit against Dilon in May in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleging patent infringement of six patents covering technology for detecting breast cancer.

Both sides were able to quickly resolve the matter, the companies said, and they “are hopeful that joint cooperation will be part of their futures as they seek to advance the fight against breast cancer.”

Dilon’s flagship product, the Dilon 6800, is a small field-of-view gamma camera for breast-specific imaging, a procedure that images the metabolic activity of breast lesions through radiotracer uptake.

• The owner of a Florida healthcare company has been convicted of defrauding Medicare. A federal jury in Miami has found Eulalia Gonzalez, owner of Rapid Fast Health (Miami) guilty of defrauding Medicare, on five counts: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and submit false claims and pay kickbacks, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, and three counts of paying kickbacks.

Gonzalez faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.